The Cost of His Clean Slate

The Cost of His Clean Slate

Gavin

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For ten years, I was Liam O' Connell' s shadow, the architect of his dark web empire. I chose him over everything, believing our bond was unbreakable, forged in the fires of the underground world. Today, he was going legitimate, hosting a party to celebrate his new beginning. I waited, expecting to finally be introduced as the woman who stood by him through it all. Instead, I watched as Liam announced his engagement to Ava Sterling, a woman who looked like she was born for the daylight. He framed our decade together as a dirty secret, something he was ready to discard, claiming I was "okay with the risks" and "understood the game," unlike pure Ava, who deserved "a clean slate." He even offered me a black card as a severance package, then asked if we could still be friends. The ultimate insult. The night before, he had casually asked, "What if... what if we broke up? What would you do?" A perfectly calculated conversational trap. I walked away, drenched and humiliated, into a storm that mirrored the one in my heart. But it wasn't an ending. It was a declaration of war. What Liam didn' t know was I had a family, a legitimate tech dynasty waiting, and a man, Ethan Vance, who had spent a decade waiting for me to come home.

Introduction

For ten years, I was Liam O' Connell' s shadow, the architect of his dark web empire. I chose him over everything, believing our bond was unbreakable, forged in the fires of the underground world.

Today, he was going legitimate, hosting a party to celebrate his new beginning. I waited, expecting to finally be introduced as the woman who stood by him through it all.

Instead, I watched as Liam announced his engagement to Ava Sterling, a woman who looked like she was born for the daylight. He framed our decade together as a dirty secret, something he was ready to discard, claiming I was "okay with the risks" and "understood the game," unlike pure Ava, who deserved "a clean slate."

He even offered me a black card as a severance package, then asked if we could still be friends. The ultimate insult.

The night before, he had casually asked, "What if... what if we broke up? What would you do?" A perfectly calculated conversational trap.

I walked away, drenched and humiliated, into a storm that mirrored the one in my heart. But it wasn't an ending. It was a declaration of war. What Liam didn' t know was I had a family, a legitimate tech dynasty waiting, and a man, Ethan Vance, who had spent a decade waiting for me to come home.

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On the night of my career-defining art exhibition, I stood completely alone. My husband, Dante Sovrano, the most feared man in Chicago, had promised he wouldn’t miss it for the world. Instead, he was on the evening news. He was shielding another woman—his ruthless business partner—from a downpour, letting his own thousand-dollar suit get soaked just to protect her. The headline flashed below them, calling their new alliance a "power move" that would reshape the city. The guests at my gallery immediately began to whisper. Their pitying looks turned my greatest triumph into a public spectacle of humiliation. Then his text arrived, a cold, final confirmation of my place in his life: “Something came up. Isabella needed me. You understand. Business.” For four years, I had been his possession. A quiet, artistic wife kept in a gilded cage on the top floor of his skyscraper. I poured all my loneliness and heartbreak onto my canvases, but he never truly saw my art. He never truly saw me. He just saw another one of his assets. My heart didn't break that night. It turned to ice. He hadn't just neglected me; he had erased me. So the next morning, I walked into his office and handed him a stack of gallery contracts. He barely glanced up, annoyed at the interruption to his empire-building. He snatched the pen and signed on the line I’d marked. He didn’t know the page tucked directly underneath was our divorce decree. He had just signed away his wife like she was nothing more than an invoice for art supplies.

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